14 Cost-Effective Ways to Engage Facebook Followers

With new capabilities and creative ways to reach your audience, increasing your social media engagement doesn’t have to rely on the dollars you spend on sponsored posts. What’s one cost-effective way you have been able to increase your audience’s engagement on Facebook?

These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. YEC has also launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

1. Guest Post for Others

One of the best ways to build your audience and increase engagement on Facebook is to partner with a complementary brand. Find a noncompeting brand that has an existing audience that overlaps with your ideal target demographic and vice versa. Both brands can mutually benefit from an occasional guest post on each other’s Facebook pages. – Duran Inci, Optimum7

2. Use an Attention-Grabbing Photo

A unique photo placed at the right time boosts engagement. Photos make a much greater impression than status updates and posted links. People are drawn to visuals. They are clear, concise, easy to digest and they only take a second to look at as opposed to reading an update or clicking on a link and reading content. Once you have their attention, research has shown that people are more likely to comment. – Blair Thomas, eMerchantBroker

3. Create Contests and Giveaways

Contests and giveaways are one of the easiest ways to increase engagement on Facebook. Who doesn’t love to win something? And as a business, it’s a great opportunity to market your products. Create a contest campaign where you partner with other like-minded brands as well, so you are able to cross-promote with their audiences. It creates a win-win for all! – Leila Lewis, Be Inspired PR

4. Share Product Content Pages

As an e-commerce seller, all I have to do is copy the link to any one of my product pages and paste it on my Facebook wall. I can caption it with an incentive to win a free product if they share the page. The cost to get someone to share your post is far cheaper than launching a Facebook campaign. However, your audience reach might be smaller unless it goes viral. – Patrick Barnhill, Specialist ID, Inc.

5. Use Topical Memes and Gifs

One of the best ways to get your followers to engage with your brand is to provide topical gifs to current events. There are amazing gifs and memes that can be slightly altered to seem specific for your industry. Combine this content with targeted ads to your audience and you will see a huge impact on your engagement. – Phil Laboon, WUDN

6. Target Your Sharing

If you want to get people to engage with your posts, why not share them on your posts. This works well with targeting influencers and industry leaders in your niche. By tagging them in posts and asking a question or giving them a shout out, you can start a conversation around your topic. – Kristopher Jones, LSEO.com

7. Invite More Fans to ‘Like’ Your Page

Many of us aren’t aware that since the time we’ve created our Facebook business page that we’ve made a considerable amount of friends on our personal page. This is why it’s most beneficial to periodically invite your friends to like your page. You’ll be surprised at how many of your friends have yet to like your business page. – Chris Quiocho, Offland Media

8. Be Active in Groups

As Facebook advertising gets more expensive and the algorithm makes ranking uncertain, groups are a free way to engage with people. You can target a very specific audience in a group. If there’s not an active group that matches your niche, start your own. The key is to be consistent and add value when you post and not be overly promotional. – Shawn Porat, Scorely

9. Create Branded Culture Posts

We have been able to increase our engagement by sharing branded culture posts. Our culture posts include celebrations such as celebrating a team member’s birthday, anniversary or achievement that took place. We have found these posts to be the most engaging and have successfully increased engagement year over year. – Nicole Smartt, Star Staffing

10. Align Consistently with Your Audience

Expectations are everything for why people follow your page and continue to interact with your content. The most important thing you can do for driving organic engagement is to have a plan in place that dictates the tone, type of content, posting consistency, etc. This consistency will keep people interested in your page. – Andy Karuza, FenSens

11. Try Livestreams and Q&As

Organizing regular live streams and Q&A sessions are very cost-effective and can offer incredible results in terms of increased engagement and followers. In addition to offering increased transparency for your customer base, these forms of social media content actively encourage your audience to directly engage, driving up interactions more than simply sharing articles and memes. – Bryce Welker, Crush The LSAT

12. Ask Better Questions

Questions are a great way to get your audience engaged and talking on your Facebook page. Ask them relevant questions specific to your industry that will spark up a conversation. – Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner

13. Frame Language Correctly

With all of the new changes that Facebook implements, it’s difficult to keep your followers engaged. However, the one thing that works for us is framing post language in a way that doesn’t sound too promotional or like an advertisement. Crafting compelling one-liners usually generates the highest engagement. – Kristin Marquet, Creative Development Agency, LLC

14. Create Custom Content

We create custom graphics that provide value and encourage sharing. One example would be a graphic that shows how to save time by creating content blocks of time in your office. Once a month, dedicate specific amounts of time to content creation, then plan out the distribution. Make it into an interactive graphic and share. Simple and effective. If you can make it a video, even better. – Matthew Capala, Alphametic

Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most successful young entrepreneurs. YEC members represent nearly every industry, generate billions of dollars in revenue each year, and have created tens of thousands of jobs. Learn more at yec.co.